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MySpace Whacks Facebook With New Privacy Settings

MySpace, capitalizing on upheaval in and around the Facebook community over privacy has today unveiled a new privacy schema designed to protect and respect user data.

From MySpace:

“..in the coming weeks, MySpace will continue to simplify its privacy settings to create a simpler, more intuitive approach that gives users greater control over their information. Setting options will include public, friends only, or public to anyone 18 or over. In making this change, MySpace will default the setting to “friends only” for any user who previously had any granular page setting to “friends only.” Users can change this option with one click if they choose.”

In short MySpace is doing the exact opposite of Facebook by helping you keep your data in a more closed ecosystem, and not in the public domain. It should also be noted that the 18+ option is an especially good idea from the company, given the social network’s popularity in the younger, often below-18 crowd.

The timing of this release is not lost on the MySpace leadership:

“The last few weeks have been fraught with discussion around user privacy on social networks. We want to take this opportunity to discuss our view of user privacy on MySpace and some of the core features that made MySpace unique from its inception.”

MySpace is taking the largest window of criticism against Facebook since the aborted Beacon launch to both garner good public relations and to address a serious public concern. MySpace’s users will surely appreciate the change.

In the meantime I am off to Facebook to attempt to find the correct way to abscond my most embarrassing photos from the reaches of Google’s indexing spiders.